


Strabismus

by Hayato (TheLennyBunny)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Non-graphic depictions of violence, Takes canon and runs it through the dishwasher, author has not listened to the latest season pwease no spoil, implied headcanon shenanigans, in a non-mental illness way?, s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLennyBunny/pseuds/Hayato
Summary: He does not close his eyes. He does not keep hope to survive, or to even stop this completely. He does not think of the others, in this moment. He doesn’t wish his parents were with him or his gran or any other nebulous parental figure, not to be kissed in some last romantic gesture, not to see the everyday sunlight or feel the breeze.Wholly, completely, Jon isinfuriatedthat this is the life he’s been given thanks to one man’s delusions.
Relationships: Background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Strabismus

It’s late in the evening of a day late in the year where they exist at the outskirts of a village on the outskirts of civilization. The villagers are nice if wary of the newcomers, and they make sure to stay nice if wary of the villagers, even if none of them are Marked. It’s an odd existence compared to the hustle and bustle of London, the constant and existential terror of the Institute, the bone-deep certainty of misery that came with the Archives. 

Jon and Martin may dream with their horrors and killers, but they aren’t dogged at every waking moment by their shadow, and it’s new in a way they both like. There aren’t many people compared to the chaos that was their lives, but their neighbours are brusque and kind in a way without duplicity or hidden blood, and Basira and Georgie send regular letters with sustenance. There isn’t much to do compared to London, but there is yarn and food and quiet moors and cows aplenty to keep them occupied. 

There isn’t much certainty of their future, but there is Jon and Martin and JonandMartin, and it is good.

It’s a day like the rest had been in the week, quiet as they did the shopping or contemplated how the others were or coexisted in comfort, doing their own activities together. Martin has forgotten something from the shopping and their elderly neighbour, a woman whose son is a bit of an arse but does honest work at the pub, asked him to pick something up for her. So Martin goes, promising to take pictures of any good cows and muttering how it looks like it’s going to rain. Jon Knows it will, and Knows that Martin will be cursing all the way down to the village, but says nothing because frankly a little rain and a sneeze are like accidentally dropping a spoon at this point in their lives.

Jon himself settles into his chair, covered in a blanket, and pulls close the bag of statements from Basira.  _ A good crop _ , he’d said sagely to Martin last time,  _ the farmers were careful with the fertilizer. _

_ What could fertilizer even be in that metaphor _ , Martin had demanded through giggles, and there had been an objectively gruesome but also subjectively very dumb debate on the Corruption and Flesh’s skill at making fertilizer. Good times. 

He pick one of the statements at random, feels the smooth-subtly-textured feel of printer paper as he settles in and begins to read. He can't yet tell the flavor of the fear and doesn't quite wish to think about it, all things considered. As much as he must subsist off of these, it does not mean he must enjoy it, any aspect of it. He's certainly tasted it before though, he thinks-

“ _ Hello Jon, _ ”

-And that is when he realises it is his own, manifest,  _ horrifying _ ,  **terrible** no no no nonononono- Martin is off down the road, looking at livestock, Martin is completely unaware, Basira and Daisy and Georgie and Melanie they're not well but they're better than they would be if they stayed in the reach of this, better out of the lens of the eye but they thought this wouldn't come- 

But it is. 

Jonathan Sims is a puppet in the web of an Eye that has never ceased watching him, his flesh ruined and self burned away to be replaced as he hunts and is hunted and dies and kills and  _ suffers _ .

“ _ I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die. _ ”

Elias has used him again. Elias will use him to finish his machinations, will make a means to an end of centuries of planning for the ruin of it all and they will  _ fear _ , and  _ suffer _ , and  **_despair_ ** . 

Jonah Magnus cannot see himself. An eye can see all but it cannot see the inner machinations of itself without being flayed, halved, ruined. An eye cannot interpret without being influenced by the mind lying behind it, without the paint of millions of interactions and choices. Magnus and his eyes have decided they have seen all of Jon and Martin and the Archives and Archivists.

Jonah Magnus is a  _ fool. _

“ _ But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to. _ ”

Jon reads and sees and hears the wind pick up, the sky crackling, smells ozone and tastes blood as he bites through his tongue and continues to speak. And he knows what he can do. His hands are his own. His feet are his own, only his tongue and eyes and voice enslaved. He is, as Gertrude Robinson had ensured, not without knowledge. 

He knows what he will do, despite the words uttered as knives what seems like years ago, what had come from the fog and will stay there ad infinitum, by both their strengths. He may be forced to read this rite Jonah Magnus has placed on him, but his is not a being bent and broken, but one worn and surviving.

Keeping one’s hands busy is an easy route to mindlessness that is rare to find and rarer to keep, and Jon manages snapshots of it through shoddy but improving scarves and socks. His needles pierce the skein of yarn he uses, a cheery blue threaded with lavender and a soft brown. He’d been making his first attempts at the sleeve for a sweater, earlier. He can see them flickering silver-white in the light of the fire.

He may be a coward and a fool and a monster, but Jonathan Sims is not seeing this to its end.

“ _ Do you see where I’m going with this, Jon? _ ”

It is hard, to let go of the paper. He reads, continues to read, and yet it is still the challenge of a thousand to slowly release it finger by finger, settling softly in his lap as he dully reads word by word. His intonation is no doubt exact to the musings of Magnus, shaded with the conceit that bled from him. He sneers even as he mimics the prideful condescension of this Pupil. 

“ _ You are a living chronicle of terror. _ ”

Jon’s hand is free, away, empty even as it itches to latch on once more, hold firm and keep him a statue to the statement that feeds him. He fidgeted in his office though, capped and uncapped pens and twisted his fingers and rubbed to the roughness of callouses and the Eye cannot tame the boundless energy that had driven his grandmother to agitation and him to isolation. Simple movement is no impossibility, at this point. 

The second hand is no easier, but he manages. They shake in the light.

“ _ As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors. _ ”

He grasps it, them. A shiver goes up his arm unbidden, but no fire, no agony, no immovable force halting his movements and trapping him in his body, prison anew. He desperately wishes Martin was here, then desperately wishes he is far, far away until it is all finished. He doesn’t need to keep his eyes on the paper to keep reading anymore.

His hands are shaking, he idly notices. Like leaves in the wind as he lifts them up, metal glinting and gleaming almost as taunts. He’s terrified. Maybe the Eye is feasting right now. Maybe the Dark. Maybe even the End, or that mysterious Extinction. Jon heartily wishes the Fears could perceive, so they could perceive the spiritual middle fingers he’s violently directing at them.

“ _ And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. _ ”

He does not close his eyes. He does not keep hope to survive, or to even stop this completely. He does not think of the others, in this moment. He doesn’t wish his parents were with him or his gran or any other nebulous parental figure.

Wholly, completely, Jon is  _ infuriated _ that this is the life he’s been given thanks to one man’s fucking delusions.

“ _ Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made. _ ”

He wants Martin to hold him, one last time.

“ _ Now- _ ” A sharp movement split-second pressure  **_fuck you, Jonah Magnus_ ** popping pain 

**_s il_ **

**_e n_ **

**_c_ ** **** ****

**_e_ **

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ Yelling heaving warmth desperation cold on face arms legs body fear terror confusion grass damp fury pain painpa in yelling shouting brightness cacophony blindingness focus determination  _ **_intensity_ **

_ “My, Archivist, that’s certainly a way to do it.” Knives static ? where who ? what ? neither both where _

_ Martin ? Georgie Basira Daisy where who who _

_ “You’ve upset many a person, haven’t you? We simply must see how this pans out, yes?” _

_ Gentle amusement static void who what ? _

_ “ _ **_Why_ ** _?” _

_ Martin- _

* * *

Jon wakes up to nothing. In both a literal and figurative sense, if definitively not supernatural. His door is long gone to the manipulations of others, and cannot be rebuilt, and he knows this. He also knows he is in hospital, solely from the smell of antiseptic and beeping of a monitor and echoes of murmuring voices and occasional doors. He knows there is someone else in the room with him in fitful sleep, curled in an uncomfortable chair and dreaming- Something. He does not know. He can’t See-  _ blind blind where is he what is this what is that why can’t he-  _ and he can’t see  _ oh _ , and then the memories click back into place. 

_ Oh christ. _

He listens closely, peers with Eyes that don’t exist and they are Blinded, he cannot see to the very souls of those around him but he can discern the rural leanings of the room around him, he Sees there is a window to his right and a person he knows to his left and it is Martin and he is asleep and not very well-so, but his mind is a void where usually it would be a blaring orchestra of its own make. Jon has barely a trickle of stream to his previous ocean.

It is, in all senses, enough to make him start crying under his bandages. It is a manacle formed round his skin so tight he could never take it off removed with the limb itself, barbed wire he used to fight as it drank his blood removed even as it left scars and permanent loss.

He hopes in his fucking  _ tower _ , in his  _ fortress  _ of solitude and superiority, Elias is watching it crumble brick by brick and wrapping himself in layer after layer of shield, in shell upon shell to ward off the shadows and embers and creeping dreads that will come to him. He hopes the echoes tasted of Watching and Watched, to let the hunters catch sent. He hopes the man is torn apart, as he has done to those round him. There is no outcome to Magnus’s decisions besides annihilation in a world so rotten as the entities’.

“-Jon?”

It’s cracked, quiet and desperate and afeared. There’s a sob in both their breaths as he gives what can only be generously called a smile, and there is no ensuing crushing hug or wall-shaking yelling or complete breakdown. Martin had to have found the paper, perhaps during his panic or after, while the doctors attended. He had to have connected the dots, understood what may have happened, what would have. Jon doesn’t know for sure. A novelty.

Instead of any of that, he carefully scoots the uncomfortable hospital chair closer, knees hitting the edge of the bed Jon lays on. He takes a knobby hand, careful with the scars and the bones that jut out nowadays, and he holds it gently. 

They breathe, unobserved.


End file.
